By DITA DE BONI
How will the knowledge economy become a reality in New Zealand when nearly half the workforce has substandard reading skills?
How will all New Zealanders participate in the fruits of the Knowledge Wave when, as an OECD study suggests, around 70 per cent of Maori and roughly three-quarters of Pacific Islanders are functioning "below the level of competence in literacy required to effectively meet the demands of everyday life"?
While business leaders and politicians wax lyrical on the potential of a knowledge economy, others are quick to point out that putting the high-tech cart before the human capital horse will ensure visions of widespread prosperity remain unreachable dreams.
Opinions vary about how society fosters the building blocks of the knowledge, information and communication technology-based economy.
For many, a well-funded tertiary sector - whether public or private - is the key to stocking private enterprise.
For others, secondary school is a suitable stage at which the concepts of entrepreneurship, innovation and a seemly love of commerce can be successfully introduced.
But it seems our youngest citizens are too far off the commercial vista to worry about. Apart from those in the business world who are parents themselves, the prevailing view of early childhood education appears to be sandpits, singalongs, and kind female kindy teachers applying band-aids and buttoning jackets.
But the OECD takes a different view and suggests that economies wishing to triumph in a global economy need to pay urgent attention to pre and primary school education. Improving the quality of, and access to, early childhood education and care has become a major policy priority in member countries, it says.
These early years are increasingly viewed as the first step in lifelong learning and a key component of a successful educational, social, and family policy agenda.
At an OECD conference held on the subject in June, the head of the organisation's Directorate for Education, Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, John Martin, said a recent review of 12 OECD countries' early childhood educational systems had revealed some consistently effective strategies.
The first was a "clear taking-on of responsibility by the state for young children and their families".
Second, a "political will to fund services adequately" and service a wide range of needs within most communities, and last, the need to train and properly pay enough teachers, "not least those engaged in the development of ... young children."
In plainer language, Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash spoke at the Knowledge Wave conference of improving human capital, urging the country to expect higher outcomes for our expenditure on education: "I strongly suspect that improvements in pre-school, primary and secondary eduction are even more important for our long-term growth, and for the long-term cohesion of our society, than are improvements in tertiary eduction."
The Ministry of Education has acknowledged shortcomings in our preschool education and there can be little doubt that an increasingly complex economy, with a stronger requirement for multi-skilled workers, is contributing to a desire for improvement.
The ministry has floated the idea of compulsory preschool education and has issued a discussion document which aims to improve access to, and participation in preschool education.
About 172,000 children are enrolled at around 4100 institutions offering preschool programmes. About 40 per cent of those children go to licensed childcare centres, the rest to kindergartens, parent cooperatives (playcentres), kohanga reo and unlicensed "playgroups", and Pacific Islands language groups.
But the ministry has identified problems with the current system, including a serious teacher shortage and inadequate regulations - noting that "implementation of the curriculum to support the growth and development of children and their families appears patchy at best".
The ministry is particularly worried that, while overall participation rates in pre-school education are high for 3- and 4-year-olds, the participation rates of Maori and Pacific Island children are much lower.
Around 32 per cent of Maori and 20 per cent of Pacific Island 4-year-olds do not participate in pre-school at all: they will also become a larger proportion of the total number of 0-4-year-olds in the next five to 10 years. The total number of 0-4-year-olds will drop by 24,000, or 8.6 per cent, in the same time.
While the ministry and the Education Review Office stress the "quality" of pre-school education is a matter of prime importance, the issue of what will be taught under a compulsory preschool education system is open to debate.
Several sources in education have told the Business Herald that current programmes are overly focused on "free play", with the type of literacy and numeracy studies required by young children not possible because of insufficient teachers.
While a "utilitarian" perspective on childhood has become popular, with spending on early childhood viewed as an investment in a nation's future, spending vast sums on state-funded compulsory pre-school education is not favoured by many in business.
Simon Carlaw, head of Business New Zealand, says a higher priority is improving the outcomes for early education.
"There are difficulties enough in improving the status and quality of primary and secondary teachers let alone trying to find enough early childhood teachers as well," he says.
"Business is concerned to ensure that all education and training is of good quality, and is relevant to the world outside the education system, including work.
"[Curricula] should reflect that work and learning are interrelated, even in early childhood education."
But Lesley Max, director of the Pacific Foundation for Health, Education and Parent Support, says business can do more and agrees with Dr Brash that early childhood education should be a prime focus for proponents of the knowledge economy.
She says business should "stop trivialising the world of early childhood, see the direct cause and effect link between children's early life experiences and their competence ultimately to take part in the knowledge economy.
"The male-dominated business world has an assumption that children are taken care of by mothers, and only starts to take children seriously at senior stages of secondary school and at tertiary.
"But my concern is that the knowledge divide is widening because of this approach.
"Many kids are effectively excluded from any future participation in the knowledge economy within years of starting school."
She says that while the Government looks at more holistic alternatives to current preschool education programmes, business should "pay more attention to the outcome of the Government's investment in early childhood education".
"They might try applying the same type of analyses they apply to their own expenditure.
"Business needs to pay attention, not just to the 16- or 17-year-old kid. Because who will do well, and end up being well-adjusted, contributing members of society is decided a long time before that."
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